Freed from the paywall - Why Writing is Hard

And boy, do we writers like to moan about it!

This is an earlier post for my paid subscribers that I’m making free for everyone. I’m just about to finish a new book, the next in the historical mystery series, Miss Hart and Miss Hunter Investigate. It’s a book for my publishers, dp Books, titled A Secret in Soho. Having to write this one hard on the heels of Mercy (A Kate Redman Mystery, Book 17) has been something of a challenge! But I’m getting there… Anyway, it’s left me with little energy for writing for Substack so this article will have to do for now. Normal Substack service resumes after this book is off my hands!

I love being a writer but I can’t deny that sometimes, it’s hard to write. Not hard as in ‘work down a mine hard’, obviously. Both my siblings are in the emergency services and I’d hazard a guess that they routinely come across situations that are a little bit more challenging than worrying about the placement of a comma. Not to mention my friends who are teachers (who genuinely have some truly hair-raising stories about their working lives!).

But it is hard. I saw a meme once that said something like ‘being an author is like always having homework and then you die’. Pretty much sums it up! As a writer, you are always aware that you could be writing, that you should be writing. You can never really relax, because there’s an ever-present nagging guilt that you should be creating.

When writing Undertow (the book before Mercy) I reached a point where I sat down with my laptop, typed ten words and then had to stop. I had nothing, literally nothing to give. Writer burnout sounds pretentious but it’s a thing. There comes a point where you have nothing left inside you to put on the page and everything you type is just rubbish.

At this point, you have to take a step back. You have to put aside the manuscript, turn off your computer and go and do something else. Anything else! For me, it was a weekend spent solely with my children, no work at all, that meant when Monday rolled around, I could renew my creative efforts with gusto. At that point, I vowed that, going forward, I would not work on weekends ever again. As a creative you need to fill the creative well – you need to recharge, re-energise and fill yourself full of inspiration again.

Personally, I find when I get two-thirds of the way through a book that I start to struggle. The opening of the story is easy – I’m flushed with enthusiasm and racing along. The end is easy because I know what’s going to happen. But it’s that middle/late section that really trips me up.

You’d think I’d know how to deal with it by now, given how many books I’ve written, but my goodness, it happens every time!

But these are all minor gripes, in the grand scheme of things. I’ve very lucky that I get to make a living doing something that I love. How many people can say that? And I’d like to thank you, as a reader, for sticking with me, despite all my moaning :)

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Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash